The Solstice Sundowners Wales
A beginner route in wales, Yay. This one isn’t so much a bikepacking route to be fair it’s an organised ride meant to be ridden in one go but definitely makes a good little overnighter route if you want something short and easier in wales.
Starting in Chepstow and finishing in the capital of wales, Cardiff. This route keeps things easy, easy for wales anyway. Using lots of really fabulous cycle routed along the way, the most notable is the first one you ride on, The Wye Valley Greenway, an old disused railway line that connects Chepstow to Monmouth, with you being able to ride through the second-longest tunnel on a UK cycling route, no lights allowed inside so you are in for a very dark pedal through this 1080m long tunnel. Which at its deepest is 100m from the surface. I say no lights, there are lights inside the tunnel as the bats live there, so it’s not completely pitch black. The tunnel is not open all the time, so make sure to check time here
It does have some road slogs on this route, the longest one is after you leave the Wye valley. But I found the roads here to be pretty quiet, with the odd car here and there, so it’s not a completely traffic free route. Being a route that is supposed to be ridden in one go, you can really get through the miles fairly quickly, most of the trails are fast rolling and smooth, definitely suitable for a gravel bike. There were a couple sections that would be a little rough on the gravel bike, but they were short. I have ridden the same trails on a gravel bike before, and it is manageable. 40 mm tyres would be a good option for this route. Most of the elevation gain on this ride is pretty gradual and the only hike a bike I did was a short hike across some boggy grassy trail to get onto the old Roman road. It was actually downhill, and once it dries out (if that ever happens), then even that section should be ridable. There are a couple of lung busting climbs along this route though, but the steep ones were actually on the road, the main one was coming out of Merthyr Tydfil. Bring your dinner plate cassette for these and you will be good. A cool little fact about this route is you will get to cycle up to the highest village in Wales. This then proceeds up onto some nice gravel roads up through a quarry with some great views looking over the beautiful hilly welsh landscape.
Although this route is beginner-friendly even though the trails are mostly all easy to ride, that doesn’t mean things can’t go wrong, and in my case this ride didn’t go to plan. I had a crash and ended up in the hospital with a couple of broken ribs and a cut on my liver, which meant having to be closely monitored just in case I would need an operation to stop the bleeding, luckily no operation was needed in the end and I will be recovering for as long as it takes. So what happened? Well… As I was descending a trail towards Aberdare, nothing particularly technical, just your standard off-road bridal way. I came to a section which I essentially had two options, go right or left to navigate around a boulder, if I would go right it felt like it would be a little close to the fallen trees, and I’d likely get snagged on the branches, it was also just a much narrower route. To go left there was quite a wide open section of rock, with some wet sections on it, but it didn’t appear too slippery, but it did mean I would have to go left then back to the right, so as I started to navigate back to the right the front wheel just wiped out from underneath me.
You guessed it, I landed straight on the boulder that I was trying to avoid, right into my ribs/liver area. The pain excruciating. If that boulder wasn’t there I would have still fallen I’m sure because the section of the trail was like an ice rink the paramedics had a hard time standing up on the section my bike had slid from underneath me, but if it wasn’t there I think I would have been walking away from this one with just a few cuts and bruises, perhaps. But unfortunately that was not the case. If this section remains on the route if you ride this route just go incredibly careful, it’s between Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare, just after going under a bridge.
